This invention is about accessing the World Wide Web, and in particular it""s about providing a server based pre-screening for sites being accessed.
As the World Wide Web (Web, WWW) is becoming more and more ubiquitous, children are starting to use it, for school, research, or fun. Although many web sites are designed to be useful to and appeal to children, there are numerous web sites that are not appropriate for children. For example, there are many web sites show pornography or violence, or which have other content that is not appropriate for children. There are also web sites through which a child could potentially purchase items which parents would have to pay for. Other sites that should not be viewed by children abound. Additionally, certain parents do not want their young children to view other sites, such as News, certain types of religious or cult sites, etc.
Similar applications may be useful in a corporation, where the corporation does not wish its employees to view certain sites.
A prior art solution to this are downloadable client based programs such as NetNanny. Such programs permit the parent to download a listing of xe2x80x9cappropriatexe2x80x9d web sites. When a user selects a web site that is not listed as xe2x80x9cappropriatexe2x80x9d the program requires a password. Thus, for example, the parents would have a password, so they could access web sites that are not in the xe2x80x9cappropriatexe2x80x9d list. However, the children would not have this password.
However, there are a number of problems with such a client-based system. First, if a web site changes from being appropriate to being inappropriate, the parent must download the new listing of appropriate sites, which no longer would include that web site. If the parent fails to download the new listing, the child may be given access to a site which is inappropriate. Furthermore, because the list of sites is maintained on the parent""s computer, the same process has to be repeated for each computer that is accessible to members of the household. In addition, because the list of sites is maintained on the parent""s computer, an older child could possibly add sites to the list of appropriate sites, and thus corrupt the system.
A method of providing only pre-screened content is described. The method includes maintaining a database on a server including a plurality of pre-screened sites. When a universal resource locator (URL) is received, the method verifies that the URL represents one of the plurality of pre-screened sites. If the URL represents one of the plurality of prescreened sites, displaying data associated with the URL, otherwise, not displaying the data.